Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes.

Peanut butter cups are one of my favorite desserts. So when we had cupcakes at a recent work event and I was excited when I saw peanut butter cup cupcakes on the dessert table. But I found the peanut butter cup cupcake to be disappointing. It was very dry and lacked any real chocolate or peanut butter flavor. In the following days, I just couldn’t get that subpar cupcake out of my mind. Sad, isn’t it? So I decided that I could do better and set out to make an extraordinary peanut butter cup cupcake.

As soon as I saw this recipe on Two Peas that included a full peanut butter cup in the cupcake, I knew my cupcake mission would be a success. I used their peanut butter frosting recipe as well. I love Hershey's “Perfectly Chocolate” Chocolate Cake recipe so I used that in place of the one in the Two Peas’ recipe. Really any chocolate cupcake recipe, or even a cake mix, will work. These do take a bit of time to assemble but it is well worth it.

So how do you get that full size peanut butter cup in the cupcake?

Simply pour a small scoop of batter into each cupcake liner, place the peanut butter cup butter on top of the batter and then add remaining batter to the cupcake liner, covering the peanut butter cup.

Bake the cupcakes according to your cupcake recipe. Mine were in the oven for 20 minutes. When you take them out of the oven, they look like normal chocolate cupcakes.

I just got a new cupcake carrier. Isn’t this so neat?

It's easy to carry and I really like how the holders stack together.

Once the cupcakes are cool, mix up your frosting and try not to eat it all.

I made about 30 cupcakes to take to work and this frosting recipe made enough for all of my cupcakes. Although, I’m a fan of mounds of icing on cupcakes so if you are more liberal with your frosting you might need to double the recipe, depending on the number of cupcakes you make.

Don’t these look delicious?!?!

There wasn’t a single cupcake left when I took these to work. That’s always a good indication of whether a new recipe was a success. Mission accomplished!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a muffin pan with cupcake liners. Pour a spoonful of batter into prepared cupcake liners. Place full size peanut butter cup in the cupcake liner and then add remaining batter, filling cups 2/3 full with batter. Bake 22 to 25 minutes.

Once completely cooled, frost the cupcake with peanut butter frosting. Top each cupcake with a mini peanut butter cup if desired.